Interpretation of Jamal Abdillah & Malique's Aku Maafkan Kamu

At the age of 12 I was quite obsessed with reading my sister's textbook for SPM's Malay Literary - Bunga Gerimis, Hari Kemerdekaan and Hikayat Umar Umayyah. The first was my favorite with a collection of high-quality modern Malay poetry. It was up to a point that I seriously considered to be a seniman like A. Samad Said.

Anyway, I overheard this song by Malique featuring Jamal Abdillah on the radio. I checked out the lyrics, and it's quite deep and beautiful (this link contains the song and lyrics in Malay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAsVtswC4Zg).

The first stanza describes a place or more precisely a group of narrow-minded idiots who like to make noise about different issues.

The rest of the song expresses anguish and disappointment to these idiots who are lacked of knowledge, but quick to judge people, or "mengkafirkan" fellow citizens (there were even some religious enthusiasts, regretfully involved some with honorable educated title, who blamed the ignorance to some religious practices in the MH370 tragedy).

Specifics advice from the song includes:

• We should think before we speak
• Be quiet (Miranda rights) sometimes is an intellectual virtue
• Sometimes we just have to pretend listening to some idiots

The song keeps repeating that those idiots are forgiven, but without any prejudice I doubt the sincerity to forgive. I'd question the need to forgive in the first place anyway.

Here is the literal translation of the first stanza:

There is a small house at the end of a village
In the house there is a box under a broken mirror
Inside the box is a coconut shell
Under the shell a frog is shouting like hell

So it's not just describing a frog under a coconut shell, a euphemism for a narrow-minded person. It's more like a triple narrow-mindedness - the frog under the shell inside the box inside an isolated house!